1. Account Management: Agency and Client views
MKF 3621
Advertising Management

2. Account Management In Australian agencies, from the top CEO
Group Account Director – most places
Account Director – everywhere
Account Manager – training position
Account Executive – training or support position

3. Account Director Central actor
Direct responsibility for health of client relationship
May run two or more accounts
Account profitability
Account growth and development
Coordinate team inside agency
Creative team(s), account planner(s), media planner(s)

4. Account Management in relation to client
Listen carefully to client’s goals
Interpret client’s goals into achievable strategies through agency team
Will often have to examine pricing, product design, packaging, distribution, afterservice, and persuade client to improve something before advertising – or other IMC – can be effective

5. Account Director Contact reports
Every contact between agency and client is documented by account management
Meeting, phone conversations, messages which include DECISIONS must be documented
Copies will go to all client and agency personnel involved with the account
Most of these are now on as attachments
Contact reports are central to the legal relationship between client and agency
The underlying legal basis is the agency-client contract or
“letter of terms” setting out terms of trading.

6. Account Directors skills
Vary with the kind of account they work on but likely to include
Strong marketing knowledge – theory and practice
Knowledge of how advertising works , particularly how creative styles impact on consumers and others
Empathy with creative people
Organisational political skills – viz understanding how POWER can be and is used within and between organisations
Will normally relate to client Marketing Director

7. Political skills
Political science/Government studies are concerned primarily with the use of power in government
Many management scholars have examined the exercise of power within businesses and between them
The ACCC is concerned with the misuse of power within business

8. Political skills
Account Directors are concerned with ensuring that power held by all participants is directed towards the client’s and agency’s ultimate goals.
Experience is necessary to sensitively exercise power, or guide its exercise upon you! Hence Account managers!

9. Account manager
Usually an entry level to account management. (Old-fashioned books and movies refer to Account Executives!)
Will normally report to Account Director and will handle routine activities of an account – contact reports, reconciling billing processes, facilitating agency meetings
Moves to handling campaign extensions
Backs up Account Director on major new campaigns

10. Group Account Director
Typically manages three or four account directors, maybe more or fewer.
Will have senior client relationships
May relate to client CEO or COO
Will report to agency CEO, and have a major role in agency strategy
Likely to be involved in building new business
Likely to selectively (and according the existing loads) involve Account Directors and Managers in this

11. Agency CEO
In Melbourne or Sydney the local agency CEO will report to a country head
Will normally have two prime roles
The selection of staff in all agency fields
Manage development of existing staff
Must drive new business development
Staff new business effort, manage it along with existing business

12. Agency CEO In a city like Melbourne
Represent the agency in business forums
Position the agency among its local competitors
Most international agencies have international clients aligned in from somewhere else in the world
But local profitability will only be possible with some locally-won business as well
Makes for a more exciting work environment for all
Even internationally-aligned clients prefer it!

13. Agency CEO Must manage local agency like a unit of a larger business
Will report to country CEO
Local profitability gives him room to move and funds to invest
Manages profitability through agency-client negotiations

14. Client views of account management
Range over a whole spectrum
Just a bag carrier
Contributes to my whole business
Organises great advertising, but soooo expensive
Its so much fun getting out of the office into the agency….
Etc, etc

15. What do clients need from account management
Empathy – must feel understood and that AD sympathises with their goals – friendship in business?
Access when the client wants
Someone to structure the agency-client relationship
Someone to run the agency for the client

16. What do the other agency team members need from account management?
For Account Planning to represent the consumer and the brand’s full potential, the client must provide research, sales data, etc, etc, and AD is expected to help persuade client…

17. What do the other agency team members need from account management?
Creative need tightly focussed briefs
Through planning, if it exists
If not, AD creates the brief
Most agencies have a standard briefing form
Some clients like Holden have their own

18. Typical creative brief - TA
Who is the target audience?
Typical consumer evocative description
What is their relationship with the brand?
What do they know, believe, feel about the brand?

19. Typical creative brief – intended communication
What do we want them to do, know, feel, believe?
What is the evidence which will justify this?
What is the selling idea?

20. Typical creative brief – mandatories
30 sec TVC, FPC magazine ad, etc –
Use of logo
Dates for creative
Etc